James Hervey

Hervey, James (1714-1758) was an evangelical, Calvinistic Anglican divine from Northampton, who was a popular cleric at Weston Favell and Collingtree, 1752-1758. He was widely known for Theron and Aspasio, or a Series of Letters upon the Most Interesting Subjects, 3 vols (3rd ed., London: C. Rivington, 1755). Hervey was an evangelical Anglican divine, a Calvinist, and friend and correspondent of John Collett Ryland, Baptist minister at Northampton. Theron and Aspasio was generally well received, but not without criticism from some who thought Hervey’s opinions too close to antinomianism, a tendency associated at this time with High Calvinism, and from others, like Robert Sandeman, who thought Hervey too close to Arminianism, allowing ‘works’ (what Hervey termed ‘assurance’) to enter into ‘faith’ (to Sandeman, faith was merely an intellectual assenting to the divine testimony of Christ, not a felt experience or any ‘imputation’ between God and man).  Hervey was criticized by Wesley and the Methodists for his emphasis upon the doctrine of ‘imputed righteousness’, in which a believer at conversion is declared righteous, not based upon his own deeds, but through his faith in Christ, and thereby receives (via imputation) the righteousness of Christ made efficacious through Christ’s divine sacrifice. To many, including the Catholics, who had argued this with Calvin, imputed righteousness absolved man of his need to obey God’s law and perform good works, hence opening the door to antinomianism on the one hand (it does not matter what one does, since righteousness is imputed and not dependent on one’s actions) and a denigrating of man’s moral responsibility on the other (it does not matter what one does, since nothing can effect one’s righteousness before God). Steele’s reading of Hervey seems devoid of such doctrinal nitpicking, no doubt finding in his work a description of both the faith and assurance she was seeking. Passages such as the following would have found fertile ground in her mind and heart at this time:  ‘The Act of Trusting in Christ is much of the same Nature. It presupposes, that Christ is the Trustee of the Covenant of Grace; it proceeds upon a Conviction of his Faithfulness in executing the Office; and it is a solemn Surrender or Giving up the whole Affair of our Salvation into his Hand. Giving it up, not in Uncertainty of Success (this would be mistrusting, rather than trusting) but with a Certainty, in some Measure suitable to the Fidelity and Ability of HIM, with whom We have to do’ (Theron and Aspasio, vol. 3, p. 312). For Hervey’s discussion of imputed righteousness, see Theron and Aspasio, Dialogue V, vol. 2. Anne Steele wrote a poem in praise of the work (see Timothy Whelan, gen. ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. [London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011], vol. 1, poem 166). Hervey was a friend and correspondent of John Collett Ryland, and  several letters between the two (composed c. 1752-1758) appeared in Ryland’s The Character of the Rev. James Hervey (London: W. Justins, for R. Thompson and H. D. Symonds, 1790).